Sekulić, Sava

Sava Sekulić was born in 1902 in Bilišani near Obrovac, on the Dalmatian coast. After his father’s death he had to work as a workman’s-hand. Sekulić never attended school, but taught himself to read, write, and paint. During the First World War, Sava Sekulić was sent to the Italian front at the age of fifteen, where he was wounded and lost sight in his right eye. After the war he travelled through Yugoslavia as a casual worker. In 1943 Sekulić settled in Belgrade where he found work as a bricklayer.

At the age of thirty, Sekulić started painting. He regarded nature as his great teacher. Animals, strange bodies and historical heroes were often the subject matter of his art. The compositions are usually simple. He often painted a single figure, consisting of human as well as animal forms. He signed his work CCC, the initials in Cyrillic script for ‘Sava Sekulić Autodidact’. According to his own testimony, Sekulic began to write poems on the eve of World War II and illustrated them himself. Many of his poems are elaborated with verses he wrote on the reverse; they help today’s onlooker understand his works and identify themes and contexts. After retiring in 1962, Sava Sekulić devoted himself entirely to his artistic creativity – painting and writing poems.